You hear it time and again, outsourcing strategies that backfire or hinder a company's ability to remain competitive in a fast-paced marketplace. Needs change, and yesterday's strategic panacea becomes tomorrow's roadblock to innovation.

Count General Motors among the companies reassessing -- and in the automaker's case, actually reversing -- its sourcing strategy. That's right, one of the biggest consumers of outsourcing services is in the process of shifting away from IT outsourcing and bringing much of its technology work back in-house.

In light of such a dramatic reversal in IT strategy, anyone who relies on outsourcing providers to fulfill IT functions should at least think about their sourcing strategies and how they might be changed for the better.

And there are indications that the growth of outsourcing is slowing. Research and advisory firm Everest Group in August 2012 reported that the global services market saw transaction volumes dip in the second quarter of this year, following a declining trend seen over the previous four quarters.

Whether it is to increase flexibility, deliver solutions faster, or improve quality of service, organizations seeking to break free of outsourcing dependency should keep in mind that weaning off service providers is no easy matter. It involves building up internal expertise and streamlining your IT operations; for lots of companies, the move to insource can be long and costly.

There are plenty of ways to find and attract qualified IT professionals who possess the skills you're looking for -- particularly via social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. How long it takes to fill job roles and how much it will cost should factor into your insourcing plans. Coupled with your staff's current skill sets and willingness to train, the makeup of IT candidates you budget to hire will have a significant impact on the types of IT projects that will prove easiest to insource.

GM plans to at least double the number of its in-house IT experts over the next three years. The company currently outsources about 90% of its IT services and provides 10% of the work through internal resources. Within the next three to five years, GM hopes to reverse the percentages in part by hiring software developers, database experts, and other IT staff worldwide.

One of the factors to consider when building up a skills base is which emerging technologies are most important to the organization. For example, if your company is looking to make a push into big data, what sort of business analytics skills will it need down the road? Or if you're looking to develop more applications in the cloud, what kinds of programming skills will you need to target?

Sometimes a company that's looking to move off outsourcing can find IT talent in its own backyard. Whit.li, a startup that provides relevance technology used by major brands for personalization and insights, tried offshore development of iPad and iPhone applications.

But the model didn't work, says CEO Jack Holt, and the company soon realized a more agile approach with developers nearby would better serve its needs. "We're a lean startup, meaning we release products with minimal functionality, get customer approval, then add more," Holt says. "This strategy, which most young tech companies and even big companies have adopted, is incompatible with IT outsourcing."

Whit.li didn't have to look beyond its hometown of Austin, Texas, to find many of the IT skills it needed.

"It's a strong second-tier city where Whit.li is perceived as the top of the list for cool tech companies to work for," Holt says. "Financially speaking, you get more work, faster from in-house talent. So the cost per release is around 20 to 30% lower and 40 to 50% faster."

Enterprises can also attain a more internally manageable infrastructure by retiring legacy systems and applications. This greater simplicity alone will likely reduce your need for service providers to help with day-to-day IT functions.

Mott says GM underwent a data center transformation, including increased use of virtualization, as well as the retirement of some applications, prior to the company's decision to bring many IT functions back in-house. While the main goals of these efforts were to improve IT services and reduce costs, they've also led to a simpler IT environment that positions the company to bring more IT functions inside.

The IT transformation at GM will take several years to implement, Mott says. As part of the strategy, GM will cut its list of IT applications by at least 40% and shift to a more standardized platform. It will also move from 23 data centers worldwide to just two.

Not every company that's outsourcing IT is going to follow GM's lead and pull back in-house many of the technology services now being outsourced. But for many organizations, it might make sense to insource some functions currently under the domain of service providers -- and this might be the time.

If your organization is in that group, it's important to remember that changing sourcing strategies is no small deal -- particularly when it comes to IT components that affect nearly every facet of the business. Be sure to take the necessary steps that can help make the transition a success.